Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.

The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.

The following are notes from Ep. 183 - What does Gratitude have to do with Sales? Pt. 1

Listen to the conversation here:

Or read below 

00:16
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to another episode of Sales with ASLAN. I'm your host, Tom Stanfill. God, I have a good radio voice today. I feel like I have that good fake radio voice today. Tab, I was my co host. I'm talking to my co host, the best co host in the business, Dr. Tab Norris.

00:33
Tab Norris
Oh, thank you, Tom. It's always a pleasure. You really do have a nice you have good texture to your voice today. Yeah, I don't very I do think.

00:43
Tom Stanfill
I could be, like, a good singer if all I did was sing. Talk a little bit, just talk a little bit. Anytime you have to carry a note, go up or down, I'm in trouble.

00:54
Tab Norris
Kind of a rapper.

00:55
Tom Stanfill
Such a rapper.

00:57
Tab Norris
Yeah, you just go so anyway, there I was in the jungle walking around. Yeah, I can see that.

01:05
Tom Stanfill
I think we've lost all of our listeners and our sponsors. And by the way, don't forget to check out our sponsors. We love our sponsors. So buy stuff from our sponsors. Tab I know we always say we're excited about our guest, and sometimes we mean it, and sometimes no. I think we're always excited about we.

01:23
Tab Norris
Are always we wouldn't have them if weren't excited.

01:25
Tom Stanfill
We're excited about some guest, which we're not going to go down the list of all guests. But I have to admit, I was a little surprised at the quality of.

01:36
Tab Norris
This when you because we know this guest so well. I mean, we've known him since he was.

01:46
Tom Stanfill
Like we had John Cerqueira on. That's what this podcast is. We invited John Cerqueira on the show. John was our top producer, multimillion dollar deals for, I guess, almost ten years with his tab.

02:03
John Cerqueira
Yes.

02:03
Tom Stanfill
He had a little stint where he left us and came right back because we love John. Saw the light. Yeah. But he left us, I think, for good.

02:16
John Cerqueira
Yeah.

02:16
Tom Stanfill
After the podcast, I'm like, I don't think he left us to start a change management and coaching firm focused on the companies that we serve, sales organization, which I was a little surprised to learn came out of his own journey, which I'm aware of, his personal journey. He was a survivor of 911, really, touted as a hero because of the work that he did, carrying someone in a wheelchair down 80 something floors. I mean, he's been featured on Discovery Channel, on Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America. He has been widely recognized, wrote a book about it. And of course, I know that story that happened, obviously, a long time ago, but I didn't understand the effect it had on his performance and is how at ASLAN even though he was the top performer, how he was.

03:08
Tom Stanfill
Saying his emotional state and his ability to manage his emotions and show up as his best self was keeping him from operating at an even higher level.

03:18
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah. And it was hard. Very surprised by that. And he was battling things internally that we never saw. And that's what you don't realize. He was carrying weights and he had chains on it. It was almost like he was fighting through those burdens. And it just shows you how amazing he is that he was able to do that and perform well. Anyway, yeah.

03:39
Tom Stanfill
And I got to tell you, I was a little skeptical when I heard about, hey, we're going to talk about self regulation and how your fear can inhibit your performance and yada, yada. As a matter of fact, he even mentioned to me at one point when he was starting his kind of moving in this direction, hey, if you ever want support or help, let me know. And I'm like, sure, right, I'm good. Yeah.

04:04
Tab Norris
Because I didn't really know what it.

04:05
Tom Stanfill
Was because it just sounded so conceptual. And I felt I have pretty high awareness of my emotional state and have tools to manage that, et cetera. But I could tell you what he talked about on this podcast is life changing. And I think he's really focused on something that really does unlock performance. And I don't think people really understand or aware of how they feel, what's locking them up, how fear plays a role, emotions play a role, our past plays a role and keeps us from operating at our highest level. Do you agree with that? Did you come away with the same 100%.

04:43
Tab Norris
The irony is that I've been working through some of this personally on my own and it was so validating. I've already been using it a lot of these tools, even sharing with my wife, just working through some things. I hate to say the favorite, but this was one of my big takeaway.

05:04
Tom Stanfill
Podcasts and he's just so good at communicating. So you guys are going to love this podcast. And I have to say, I had a presentation right after this podcast, right after, and I went from kind of nervous and a little my brain is not firing. Because when you get nervous and we talked about this on the podcast, you get nervous, your brain doesn't work. And that's why I have to super prepare for when I'm giving a talk because I'm going to be nervous standing in front of 800 people and my brain is not going to work. So I have to almost get to a point where I memorize it because I don't know what my brain is going to do and I'm not free and I'm not present, which keeps you from really performing.

05:45
Tom Stanfill
And then right after we talked about all the things that he unpacked just in this first episode, because this is a two part episode and in this first episode, he just kind of lays out the importance of it and the first step of becoming our best self and getting in the best emotional state. And some people call it flow. Athletes, I think they call it flow. You just are operating at highest level of performance. So I saw it, I firsthand applied it right after this podcast, and it completely changed my meeting. Excellent. Hope you guys are going to enjoy this is part one. And make sure you don't miss part two of this episode of sales with Aslam and John Cerqueira. John Cerqueira, great to see your mug again. It's been two, although we did have dinner, I mean, what, a couple of weeks ago?

06:38
Tom Stanfill
But we used to do this every week and now we do it every six months, which is just a shame.

06:45
Tab Norris
Well, it's been much longer for me since I've seen that mug.

06:49
Tom Stanfill
That's true.

06:50
Tab Norris
And I had a little tear when.

06:51
Tom Stanfill
I first saw him.

06:53
John Cerqueira
Look, I think we're focusing too much on the negative of the time that's passed and not celebrating. Yeah, we're here together and this feels okay. That's fine. Okay, you're right.

07:06
Tom Stanfill
Why don't we just leave the back? You left us. Okay, now you're back and then we're just going to focus on the back.

07:12
John Cerqueira
That's it.

07:13
Tom Stanfill
You're like the kid that moved away and we're like, we're focusing on you moved to California and you're like, I came home. I came home.

07:21
John Cerqueira
That's it. Yeah, it's whatever. The opposite. There's another time bound version of don't be sad, it's over, be happy that it happened. Right.

07:31
Tom Stanfill
Good.

07:32
John Cerqueira
It's a homework card. I have to workshop that. This is coming.

07:39
Tom Stanfill
No, man, I am honestly excited about I mean, we caught up over dinner, super excited about what you're doing and the value you're bringing. Organizations that are sales organizations, and not only just and you can talk more about this, not just sales organizations, but I guess almost any organization who's navigating change, who needs to improve performance, how do they unlock the desire to do that? How do they remove barriers, what support leaders need, how do we coach them? I mean, just tell us about what you're seeing, what you're doing, and how you're really helping organizations.

08:14
John Cerqueira
Yeah, I love it. It might make sense to back into how I got here. So love my time at ASLAN. Love you guys, as always. That's why we're here. The data point is my experience in the Trade Towers 911, where in this really beautiful twist of fate you and I met. Tab, I think you know this. Thomas met the Thursday before 911. 911 happened. The long story short was my boss and I at the time happened upon and were able to help a woman who was a wheelchair user out of the building that we met on the 60 eigth floor. And we all got out of the building five minutes before it collapsed. And so that was part of my life. And then I just went back to work and was just kind of doing your regular sales job.

09:16
Tom Stanfill
Okay, I'll just go back to work.

09:18
Tab Norris
I'll just go back a couple of days off.

09:20
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

09:21
John Cerqueira
Now I'm back to work and this experience that we would be on talk shows like Good Morning America and Oprah, there was no model for what then I would do with that information afterwards. And so I would do some speaking at nonprofits and churches. But in terms of there were suggestions about being a keynote speaker and it felt like it was kind of taking advantage of a very sacred story to make that in any part of any way a profession. And so I just went back to normal work and normal worked with ASLAN, loved my time there, spent some time, went back to business school, and so all was well. Well, then the pandemic hits and our clients so I'm spending time with ASLAN, driving revenue and then doing a lot of the work, doing consulting, doing coaching with our clients.

10:12
John Cerqueira
And two separate clients reached out to me during the pandemic and said, hey, our teams are freaking out. And we see parallels between what were all feeling in the aftermath of 911 and what we're feeling in the pandemic. There's confusion, our businesses turned upside down, we don't know which way is up, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Can you talk to them? I said, yeah, sure, yeah. And so I did that, and to my shock in delight, they got value out of it.

10:45
Tom Stanfill
Because if you can navigate 911, you can really navigate anything.

10:52
Tab Norris
That was a little major change and turmoil.

10:57
Tom Stanfill
And I know you've glossed over that story, which I understand, but that was not an easy thing. That was not an easy sure process. Trauma with a big t, trauma with.

11:11
John Cerqueira
A big t, and trauma with a long tail with maybe a big t.

11:16
Tom Stanfill
That'S another t running with it. Oh, we could turn that into something.

11:21
John Cerqueira
Well, where the real story was not how I got right after, like immediately after 911, it was really how I would manage that experience. And the trauma that would rear its head really would manifest professionally. And there were times where I would take professional failures really hard or I would take professional opportunities as these do or die instances, because I had this one experience, I had a high watermark of when it matters for you to perform, you go all out. And there were times where I would go a little too all out and I would spin myself out.

12:03
John Cerqueira
And that was the dimension professionally that I felt was of value to other professionals to say, hey, I know you are getting super attached to the success that is in front of you and you are scraping at it and you are grinding or you're taking any barriers as these catastrophes and they're spinning you out. And so here's how you get a little more level set and come to find out that's what really the core of what had historically been called executive coaching, but now it's just called coaching. That's what that was really meant to address. Helping people to kind of quiet the waters, quiet the internal temper tantrum we all throw when we are feeling out of balance and how to tamp that down so that you can clearly assess what's the next right thing. To do?

12:59
John Cerqueira
Where can you be of service and then do that with kind of trust, without worrying about what you get out of it, without kind of this idea of reciprocity, but just moving ahead and continuing that cycle to just find what the next right thing is to do.

13:16
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I'm going to ask this as a question. I think that the people who would think, oh yeah, woo, that's real touchy feely. I got to hit a number. How's this related to being successful as a leader? Because I mean, I got a quarterly number I got to hit, I got to feed my family. And you're going to talk about how do I feel more comfortable and how do I address fear, which by the way, I believe that's critical because it's what not addressing that is what keeps you from being performing. Talk a little bit about that and why that's so important.

13:59
John Cerqueira
Yeah.

14:00
Tom Stanfill
And how that related to you being successful, because you were super successful. But it also sounds like it was keeping you from being even more successful or it was leading to burnout.

14:11
Tab Norris
It was taking a toll.

14:12
John Cerqueira
Right, for sure. So two points to that which directly relate to my experience with ASLAN or at ASLAN. One, when we would get drawn into projects, it was by and large because a sales organization, customer facing organization, wanted to better at hitting their goals. We're trying to get more clients, we're trying to keep more clients, trying to grow more clients. Great. And we would work with these key stakeholders to craft a program and craft an initiative and it would all make sense. And we'd have these statements of work and a project plan and it made logical sense. Here are the barriers, here's the training, here's what will play out, here's what.

14:59
Tom Stanfill
They need to learn.

15:01
John Cerqueira
And then we would get to these early deployments. And if we hadn't done this really critical element of change management, where we made sure that not just senior leaders, but your mid level leaders, frontline leaders, even a mix of some of the individual contributors were bought in the project will be way less successful. That's when I started seeing that, gosh, this logical path of here's your problem. We brought in help to your business problem.

15:35
Tom Stanfill
You have a business problem. We're here to solve the business problem.

15:38
John Cerqueira
And it would make perfect sense and people would just not want to do it sometimes for no other reason. Not that they didn't understand, not that it was too hard, not that it was too complex.

15:48
Tom Stanfill
They just didn't want to change is hard change.

15:50
John Cerqueira
Yeah.

15:51
Tab Norris
Change is not what people like.

15:54
John Cerqueira
Nobody likes change, particularly change that they've not planned. Most people don't even really like change that they've planned. They think they want the change and they get in it, and they don't even want this.

16:06
Tab Norris
I'm going to go back to what it used.

16:07
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I started a whole 30 diet two days ago, and I'm like, Do I really want to do that's?

16:14
John Cerqueira
A lot of change.

16:15
Tom Stanfill
I planned it. I'm like, I got to eat healthier. My cholesterol is going up three days in. I'm like, I don't know if I really want to do this.

16:24
John Cerqueira
So we would see that, right? And I know the three of us would see this. Hey, plan makes sense. It is sound. And then it would hit the streets, and people just throw up on it sometimes what is going on? And it was highly emotional, and oftentimes we wouldn't figure that out until the follow up coaching. So we shifted strategy at ASLAN I don't know when this was maybe ten or so years ago, and said, hey, that upfront change management piece is particularly important. There is manager acceptance, and we really have to make sure that key influencers in the organization are bought in.

17:01
Tom Stanfill
How do we drive desire?

17:02
John Cerqueira
Yeah. And a lot of those conversations were not vocationally oriented. They were oriented on what's the strain you feel. What does it feel like when you have to communicate this other change to your team and they don't want to shift and you don't even want to shift? So we saw that. And by the way, Ted, you said, I'm curious about what you're that's what we're seeing. It is that simple, but not easy, but it is that simple. Organizations I work with will have a plan. They build out this plan in the executive suite, and it's based on sound analysis. It's logical if then statements. And then they roll it out to the team and they say, hey, we have the answer. You're welcome. And the team says, I don't want your answer because that's not my answer and I don't want to do it.

17:54
John Cerqueira
That's what I'm helping with. Is oftentimes carrying water for why this is important and oftentimes uncovering what had historically been buried, this level of tension between the people that are being asked to do something and the people who are asking them. Right. There's all types of resentment that comes in with why do you get to make the decision? And you made a decision a year ago, and I didn't like that, and I wasn't comfortable with it. And a lot of it is unearthing. Hey, is that what you're blocked by? Because this plan is actually not that bad of a plan, right?

18:28
Tab Norris
So it sounds like you play a liaison oftentimes between the field and then senior leadership, because we've seen that so many times silos happen, right?

18:42
John Cerqueira
Yes.

18:43
Tab Norris
Here we are. We're great, and we're going, and of course I'll go do it. Young people and then there's wondering why it's not happening. And so you're kind of playing that role, which I think is very valuable. I totally see that.

18:56
John Cerqueira
I like to think it's valuable. I mean, a scenario that I'll bring up for that is person who ran head of sales for the entire country, about 400 salespeople. They had gone through a lot of change. And he wanted to institute a coaching culture with his leaders because he said, gosh, that's going to be the path to us smoothing out this change. And I said, well, I've seen that a million times. I got it. And he said, everybody just needs to get behind it and move past what used to be to what is. I'm like, I've heard that story before. Yeah, well, then I went and interviewed some of these key leaders and found out that there was more to this story than had been revealed to me. They were frustrated with how the change had happened.

19:40
John Cerqueira
There had been some comp shifts that were still kind of stinging the sales organization. There were some shifts on what they could sell now and what they couldn't sell now. And that was how they had all figured out how they were going to back into their number. I said, oh, this is not just about guys get excited about the new plan. We might need to dredge up and unpack some of this residue that's built up. And so before we ran a session, so usually I'll do a kickoff session that looks a lot like a workshop. It's around self regulation for the leaders and then using that model to help them guide their people through change, which is a coaching model. But before we did that, we had basically a sharing session. It was corporate family therapy to say, hey, I've heard from you guys.

20:31
John Cerqueira
And the key concerns fit into these two key categories. And those categories were loss of autonomy and being asked to do things that didn't feel mission critical from all these cross functional partners. So basically they're like, I'm getting all this busy work dumped on my desk. That doesn't help me hit my number, doesn't help my people hit my number. Meanwhile, the things I used to be able to decide on my own, those decisions are being taken out of my hand and being decided at a central location. I was like, guess what? If that happened to me, I'd be annoyed also. So here's what I know from leadership and I don't think you guys are that far apart.

21:11
John Cerqueira
And so we facilitated, I facilitated a conversation where these key leaders brought up, hey, here's how this loss of autonomy or this busy work hits me and here's what I want to know and here's how I would change. And we had the key leader who ran the country and then the person who ran all the east region respond to it. And the responses were normal. We're appropriate, we're reasonable. And just hearing just having all these.

21:40
Tom Stanfill
People, having them come together and like the corporate family therapy and hear both sides and basically be able to take the trip with each member of the family, they start to go.

21:55
John Cerqueira
Oh. Without all of these mid level mid and senior level leaders kind of going off to the side and having their own rumor mill spilled out, It was like, hey, we are all hearing the same thing at the same time. You can all pressure test this and hear it. So we did that, and then went through the kickoff workshop and then had individual coaching sessions with these people that were all confidential, open ended, but were really around. How are you processing this and what's in your way? Some were highly vocationally oriented. One person was entering into a nascent market, and he had come from a pretty mature market, and he was trying to run the same motion with his team that he had run in a mature market. In a nascent market. Hey, here's a shift to that.

22:52
John Cerqueira
So that ended up being a vocationally specific through line of our conversations. Somebody else was just saying, I just don't have enough time to do all these things, and I have my own kids and I have my team, and they're relying on me, and I just am so mad from this last three years, and I just can't get out of my own way. And so the conversation was that's the emotional side. Yeah. And we worked through that, and the upshot was towards the end of our sessions together, said, hey, my team is getting the version of me now that they deserve because I got out of my own way, and I see the difference in them. And he had some material ROI impact, I mean, to the tune of millions of dollars at a really nice 30 ish 35% margin.

23:42
John Cerqueira
So this is the marriage of there's some vocational, there's some emotional, but whatever is blocking an individual who has to perform, that's important, because if you don't move that, they can't get to where they want to go.

23:57
Tom Stanfill
So how does an organization, John, that's so, like, you describe, can, it seems, manageable? I'm having family therapy. I'm picturing five people in a room. We can all talk through this. Even though you said it's a 400 person organization. That might be I'm thinking 20 people. That's pretty sizable. But if I'm thinking I've got like, I was with a client recently, and I'm talking to somebody from Scotland, and they're like, we got purchased, and now we're part of this big multi billion dollar company, and they had some of the same concern that you're sharing. Everybody's putting everything on my plate, and we got all these things going on. I can't do my job right. And so you could see his emotional state moving towards the negative. He's starting to become unreceptive to the leadership, and he's losing buy in, I guess, engagement.

24:55
Tom Stanfill
And maybe it's just about breaking it down into smaller groups. But how can we think about it organizationally?

25:03
John Cerqueira
Yeah, I mean, the simplest answer is start at the top, as top as you can get. And that's the big caveat. Who's the champion? Who believes in this? Who feels the pain of who feels the pain of having decided on a path forward that has been derived from intense, thoughtful analysis and says, I have the answer now. I need to get everybody to do it. And just like the software program they install just doesn't work. Why doesn't this work? What is happening here? And so as high as you can get and closest to the person who's deciding something, implementing it, owns the problem or owns the success of this plan, working well and seeing that it's not working, that's where you start and it's with that person and their key lieutenants. And then you trickle it down because.

25:59
Tom Stanfill
That will be you've got to be top down.

26:02
John Cerqueira
It's got to be top down. And the top person, again, as top as you can get, needs to demonstrate these capabilities. They themselves need to show up as level set, which means they themselves have to navigate through self regulation. They're feeling their own fear, they're feeling their own opportunity. That is appealing, that they want that's going to bring them something that they think they want as something that is worthy of grasping at or they see that opportunity as maybe being at risk. And so they resist. And oftentimes you see these key leaders that are not showing up as themselves and that emotion and the way they interact with their teams as you I'm sure you know, it trickles down. So it starts with, are you okay?

26:53
John Cerqueira
Now, oftentimes there's coaching with that person and then coaching their people underneath them and teaching all of them to multiply that effort. And then you go down as far as they're willing to go.

27:06
Tom Stanfill
That's an interesting point you bring up. You said, I know about the self regulation, how my emotional state affects my team, but I actually don't think we know mean I know the concept. I think that's what you mean. Tom, you understand what saying?

27:27
John Cerqueira
Yes.

27:28
Tom Stanfill
What's also true is I really don't know how my emotional state affects the team. Like, we had a meeting, a leadership meeting recently, and Tab and somebody else on the team said, you just feel so much like and it was nothing.

27:41
Tab Norris
You said it was a complete emotional thing.

27:45
John Cerqueira
That's awesome.

27:46
Tab Norris
So true.

27:47
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. But if you would have said, well, Tom, six months ago, Tom, do you feel like you're communicating the opposite of that? Whatever. That would be heavy. Yeah, I would have said, are you saying I gained weight? Said, I would have you to said, Tom, what was the difference between those two meetings that's about the have, but I don't know what I'm translating transferring, I guess, onto the team, my emotional state. So I love this idea. I love you to talk a little bit about and Tab. I want to let you get your questions in here because I can talk the air, but I want to hear about the individual performer, too. I'm the manager, right? And I'm in the middle, and I've got my team because I hear this all the time, and I'm in this organization even if it's smaller.

28:36
Tom Stanfill
But these things are happening to me outside of my team. And my response to that person. Typically, you can control your culture of your team. Now, I'm not saying they don't need more clarity and they don't need alignment and they don't need direction and they don't need support, but the reality is they're in that role. They need to work on themselves. They can control it's. What you can control your emotional state. You can control how you lead, manage, and coach. You can control the culture. So talk to that person about how they should be thinking about it and how do they manage those emotions, because I love hearing what you've learned there.

29:18
John Cerqueira
Yeah, well, thanks for that direction, because I started this with saying kind of how I got here. I would answer it in two dimensions. One was the projects we would deploy and seeing where there were sticking points that were highly, if not exclusively, emotional. The other point is the second dimension that relates to the question you just asked was my experience.

29:45
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

29:45
John Cerqueira
So here, if you got feedback, I'll put it back to you. You just got feedback that in a leadership meeting, you showed up lighter. Well, that would imply that before you were not showing up light and maybe you were not showing up as your best self.

30:01
Tom Stanfill
Right.

30:02
John Cerqueira
Well, that's what I experienced. I've spent the majority of my career teaching people how to be other centered, teaching people that we are most fulfilled when we serve others, teaching people how to show up as other centered. And we've positioned it because we're working with sales organizations in a very clear if then relationship and incentive structure. When you are other centered, yes, you're fulfilled, but other people will gravitate towards you. You will become magnetic and more influential. And so that's what most people would anchor to is the incentive structure. If I do this, then things will work better for me.

30:46
Tom Stanfill
There's a financial payoff, there's a payoff.

30:49
John Cerqueira
Well, I was teaching that, and there were times where when I'm stressed out, I couldn't find my way there. Yeah, right. So here's me touting on stage, on podcasts, in training, selling people on paying us money to teach their people how to be other centered. And when things were hitting my windshield, I couldn't find it. And so I would start getting frustrated with myself. Right. I know inside and out how to navigate an organization and pick their brains and. Figure out how to get them to be other centered. Why can't I do it myself? And so I went on a quest, really, when I started being asked to speak to people on self regulation, I better fix myself first. And what came out of that was research and spending time with thought leaders in positive psychology, emotional intelligence, ancient wisdom.

31:49
John Cerqueira
And it really packaged into really a category of common themes. I said, oh, here's a sequence. Yes, you should serve. No doubt. Here's what stops you from serving. When you're feeling stressed, you are freaking out. So what is the way to, number one, recognize when you're freaking out and find a path out of it? And the clearest answer it's very simple, is gratitude. Wow. And I happen to come this what.

32:23
Tom Stanfill
You mean by I just want to make sure because you keep saying self regulation, which I'm thinking of as metacognition, self awareness, managing your emotions. I just want you to connect to what you're saying related to that solution to the self regulation.

32:39
John Cerqueira
Yeah. So if we position the concept of being others centered in an outside of ASLAN context, that's just service to others versus service to self, to philosophy, the philosophy. Everyone knows it's better to give than receive. The best way to have a friend is to be a friend. Zig. Ziglar. You can get anything you want in life. You help other people get, like here.

33:01
Tom Stanfill
Attractive when you're focused on others.

33:02
John Cerqueira
Yeah, it's in all the Hallmark movies. Guess what? Does everybody do that? They know it, but does everybody do that? No. Why? It's because life gets in the way. Our survival.

33:14
Tom Stanfill
And fear gets in the way.

33:15
John Cerqueira
Yes, fear gets in the way. Life is hitting us. And when you're doing that, you can't think clearly. And the way I saw this show up is were vacationing with some friends who had young kids, and one of the kids was throwing a temper tantrum. And the mother said instead of yelling at the kid, hey, can you name three things you're grateful for right now? I said, what is this hippie sorcery nonsense?

33:48
Tom Stanfill
What is this hippie sorcery?

33:52
John Cerqueira
And she explained to me that, what is happening here? What is going on?

33:57
Tom Stanfill
Anybody eating gummies at this point?

33:59
John Cerqueira
Yes. Nobody was eating gummies at that point, but I was thinking like, what are you doing here? She said, look, we've visited a child psychologist, and they have advocated for this well worn approach of instead of penalizing a child when they're throwing a temper tantrum, have them anchor on what they're most grateful for, because a temper tantrum is the manifestation, it's the expression for this child who doesn't have sophisticated communication skills that their needs aren't being met. I don't feel safe. I don't feel like I'm being taken care of. And that hit me to say, gosh, does that work with adults? And I answered my own question shortly after I did start doing research because that's what we teach in customer service training, right? Someone calls up angry customer, yes, you could solve the problem.

34:44
John Cerqueira
But solving the problem isn't getting that customer satisfied or happy. First you've got to take the temperature down. And so whenever we're facing strain, our temperature is heightened. Our survival instincts are kicking up our adrenaline, our cortisol levels, literally. Come to find out through research, our vision and hearing is impacted. It gets more narrow. You can't see the forest for the trees. You only see your problem and your obsession with getting it fit. And so when we are that focused on our problem, in other words, ourselves, we're doing that because we don't think anyone else is going to save us. And so we keep grasping. And what happens is when we keep trying to save ourselves, we actually separate. We make the problem worse. We're not connected to other people. We're not certainly not magnetic. We're combative, and we're not happy.

35:52
John Cerqueira
So first step I said was, oh, how do I address my internal temper tantrum? And that's where I started doing research in the merits of gratitude. People who journal, who express gratitude on a regular basis reduce their feelings of stress and their literal expression of stress hormones by around 30%.

36:14
Tom Stanfill
Wow, this is so true. One of the things just before you move forward, please, but you mentioned all the negatives is also your brain doesn't work. Yeah, your executive function, your neural static. When I become self centered, which is driven by fear, which you've really explaining, my brain stops working. All those other things happen. Like, I'm also sending messages. My brain actually quits working. That's not a good thing when you want to perform. Yeah, like when I'm free. And the way I think about is light free, other centered. As we talk about it, the words flow. The thing I want to say, I say I'm more charismatic because I'm maybe more funny because the one I'm most at stress. So keep going. The solution is really gratitude.

37:17
John Cerqueira
It's that simple. All right.

37:21
Tab Norris
Let'S all go, be grateful and enjoy our weekend.

37:24
John Cerqueira
So here's the thing wait, hold on.

37:26
Tom Stanfill
Are we going to go out of business because everybody's going to go, we got it.

37:29
John Cerqueira
Yeah, it's super simple. All you have to do is say it. Because guess what? No one's ever said that before, that's these are universal concepts. But here's what happened. Here's what happened to me. I had heard about gratitude, grateful. A few reasons why that didn't resonate with me. One was I had usually heard it when I was a child, and it was usually meant to discipline me, like, you're not being grateful. It was levied at me as if it were a character flaw.

38:03
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, right.

38:04
John Cerqueira
Which you don't really respond. You're like, you're not good enough. You should be more grateful. Well, guess what? Screw you. I'm not being grateful. The other thing was it felt often, like it was a distraction from my problem. No, I know. Think about good thoughts, but I have.

38:21
Tom Stanfill
A I would be grateful if I solved this problem.

38:23
John Cerqueira
Yeah, guess what? It'd be really cool if this were out of my face. My relationship to gratitude, digging into it was really about saying, when you are feeling stressed, it's not a character flaw. Like there's something wrong with you for not being grateful. It is an exercise. We are not wired. It's not your fault. Our wiring, our evolutionary wiring is meant for us to survive. To keep our genetic material on this planet in what had historically been a resource scarce and threat heavy environment.

39:01
Tom Stanfill
You need to be problem focused, and you need to be your reptilian brain needs to be on high alert. Got to physically, we work better physically. When you're in a bad place, stressed out, whatever, your physical body actually performs at a higher level, of course.

39:22
John Cerqueira
Yeah, but we're spending when the tiger.

39:25
Tom Stanfill
Comes into the cave tab.

39:26
Tab Norris
Yeah, that instant right there. But like, hanging out with a tiger.

39:30
Tom Stanfill
Over time, if you're going to marry, get married to the tiger.

39:34
John Cerqueira
Wow, that's getting deep.

39:37
Tom Stanfill
We're deep people.

39:39
John Cerqueira
So I'd heard about that before. But really digging into it, saying this isn't a character flaw and it's not about distracting yourself. It's not about ignoring the problem. It's about assessing the problem and saying, hey, even in the context of this problem, even in the context of this reorganization, my job being threatened, my goal being unable to be met, even in the context of that experience, let me find a place to be grateful that starts tamping down. Even that exercise starts getting you to point to, hey, all the good things that are going on, which represents this foundation for development. So you're sound enough to move into serving tab.

40:20
Tom Stanfill
I think this is a great place to hit pause, because if we go further, we're going to spend way too much time, and I want to spend the time on all the things that John wants to share around how to manage our emotions and show up as our best self. We've uncovered step one.

40:39
Tab Norris
Yes, I agree. Let's stop right here because we can go I mean, I got plenty I don't know about you. I have plenty I can go work on just from this first big step.

40:48
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful. So thanks for joining us for another episode of Sales with Aslyn. As always, we love to hear back from you. And don't forget to show up for part two.